Courtroom History

Fri, 05/01/2009 - 2:16pm -- lovingday

The judiciary system played an important role in regulating interracial relationships. This page includes some of the most important cases on the road to the legalization of interracial couples. Click on the links below to see the full text of each decision.

This is what one judge said to Mr. and Mrs. Loving:

"Almighty God created the races, white, black, yellow, Malay, and red and placed them on separate continents, and but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend the races to mix."
- Judge Bazile, Caroline County, VA, 1965.

Loving v. Virginia (1967)

This decision legalized interracial marriage and other relationships in the United States. It is truly a milestone in the history of civil rights. From the decision: "Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State."

This decision reversed a law that prevented the "habitual occupation of a room at night by a Negro and a white person". From the decision: "it is simply not possible for a state law to be valid under our Constitution which makes the criminality of an act depend upon the race of the actor."

This decision taken by the Virginia Supreme Court, upheld that state's miscegenation laws on the grounds that "[m]arriage...is subject to the control of the States. Nearly seventy years ago the [U.S.] Supreme Court said, and it has said nothing to the contrary since."

This decision, previously known as Perez v. Moroney and Perez v. Lippold, ended the ban on interracial couples in California. From the overturned law: "All marriages of white persons with negroes, Mongolians, members of the Malay race, or mulattoes are illegal and void."

This decision guaranteed the right to marry and raise children. From the decision: "Without doubt, it denotes...the right of the individual to contract, to engage in any of the common occupations of life...to marry, establish a home and bring up children...and generally to enjoy those privileges... essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men."

This decision stated that anti-miscegenation laws were in compliance with the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment as long as both violators were punished equally. At that time, the punishment for marriage between "white person and any negro" was prison and "hard labor for the county" for two to seven years.